In this review of ‘Marxist Economic Theory’ by Ernest Mandel, Dunayevskaya criticizes Mandel’s denuding economic categories of their specifically capitalistic nature, and his distortion of Marx’s theory of crises.
declining rate of profit
Workers, from union to gig, reject rules that bosses try to reimpose
November 9, 2021Workers in the U.S. have made 2021 a year that ought to panic giant corporations and small store owners alike. The wave of strikes and other job actions this fall have exploded and not just in numbers.
The roots of May Day, its impact on Marx’s ‘Capital’ and today
June 13, 2021May Day and its celebrations became a good moment to explore the relationship between theory and the movement from practice by revisiting Marx’s intimate connection to the issues that led to May Day.
Discussion article: Neoliberal necropolitics and Indian migrant workers
May 18, 2020The coronavirus crisis has compelled the Indian state to haphazardly effectuate a lockdown in order to properly practice social distancing. But it has unaccountably forgotten that social distancing is a privilege of the elite class if well-thought-out arrangements are not made.
III. Pandemic sets in motion the latent economic collapse
April 30, 2020Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part III: The Great Recession intensified the crises but also the revolt and, because of that, the counter-revolutionary trends that led to the Tea Party, Trumpism, and their analogues internationally.
From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The economy and dialectics of liberation
April 23, 2019Raya Dunayevskaya’s archives column explores taking “a further look into the [1976] economy, to measure the depth of the recession, not for statistical purposes, but for the relationship of dialectics of liberation to economic ills.” It bears striking relevance for what is happening in 2019.
Trump aids capitalism’s attack on labor; workers strike back
January 24, 2019A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the state of the U.S. economy and the revolt of labor in the wake of country-wide teachers’ strikes, an historically long government shutdown, and an unsteady, uncertain worldwide economy.
Essay: Marx’s concept of permanent revolution as philosophy: Exploring it today with Dunayevskaya
December 5, 2018On the occasion of the publication of the new book “Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day: Selected Writings by Raya Dunayevskaya,” this essay explores Marx’s ideas on the basis of Dunayevskaya’s writings on them as a philosophy of revolution needed for our age.
III. The reality and the myth of contemporary capitalism
May 5, 2018We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
Puerto Ricans suffer as Donald Trump plays to his racist base
November 12, 2017Puerto Rico is devastated by hurricanes, with climate change a factor, and by the administration’s racist malign neglect, atop an existing debt crisis the masses did not create. Real solidarity came from below. .
DACA Dreamers and allies resist Trump
October 24, 2017A participant reports on a series of protests, rallies and marches of thousands taking place in September in Los Angeles against President Donald Trump’s attacks on youthful immigrants called Dreamers by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival Program.
Immigrants and allies challenge Trump’s inhumanity
April 22, 2017As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
January 23, 2017The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.
I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.
May 6, 2016Part I of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Discontent is seething in the U.S. among workers, youth, Blacks, women, LGBTQ, including elements of the new society. Fear of revolution is powering neo-fascism opposing the revolt.
The anguish that is Flint, Michigan
March 8, 2016Greed and racism promulgated the crisis in Flint, where water with high lead content was used by the mostly poor Black residents for over a year, poisoning an entire city with especially terrible consequences for Flint’s children.
After the referendum: The ongoing Greek crisis
July 8, 2015The two opponents facing off in Greece for five years have been the Greek masses vs. the European rulers and their institutions. The No vote manifested the revolt against austerity. We explore the meaning of these events.
Greek masses in peril
May 6, 2015The rulers’ economic squeeze on Greece is intended to be an ideological prison for the working masses of Europe. Left tendencies aim to use the state to save capitalism or move toward socialism—rather than releasing self-activity of masses in motion as the prime mover of social transformation.
Celebrating 60 years: Marx spoke to 1975 economic crisis
April 30, 2015In celebrating the first 60 years of News and Letters Committees, we reprint excerpts from the Draft Perspectives for 1975-76 by Raya Dunayevskaya, the first printed in News & Letters.
THE MOVEMENT KNOWS, of course, that the class enemy is at home, within each country. It knows full well that each existing state power is weighted down with fear of revolution. And it does not fail to appreciate that, no matter how deep the intra-imperialist rivalries, capitalist class solidarity holds tightest and strongest against its own people.
Review: ‘The Value of Radical Theory’ by Wayne Price
March 11, 2015Price presents a clear explanation of what Marx wrote in Capital about the capitalist mode of production…He correctly sees state capitalism as the final stage of the capitalist mode of production, where private capitalist property is replaced by state capitalist ownership of the means of production and distribution.
Capitalism’s political and economic degeneracy
May 7, 2014Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2014-2015. III. Capitalism’s political and economic degeneracy. A. Karl Marx haunts capitalism’s stagnation. B. The race toward climate chaos.
Specter of Depression: Mattick’s Business as Usual
July 30, 2012Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism by Paul Mattick, Reaktion Books (London), 2011.
Paul Mattick’s Business as Usual is an attempt to come to grips in Marxist terms with the global economic crisis that began in 2007. It is an entry into a growing category of books which includes David Harvey’s [=>]
Spain, Greece, Europe: capitalist crisis and revolt
July 10, 2012by Franklin Dmitryev
When the bailout of banks in Spain, the Eurozone’s fourth largest economy, was announced on June 9, the immediate reactions revealed the two worlds that exist in every country. The Spanish masses intensified their protests, marching directly on both banks and government, while Greek and Spanish workers exchanged messages of solidarity against the [=>]
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Deep recession, rate of profit and the supreme commodity, labor power
September 12, 2011From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: Written in the midst of the last double-dip recession in the U.S., the piece excerpted here was originally titled, “In the U.S. and globally: deep recession, military buildup and the pulling apart of political alliances.” It was published as the lead article in the April 1982 N&L.
The depth of [=>]
Political spectacles cannot hide reality of deranged capitalism
September 11, 2011by Ron Kelch
At the end of a months-long political spectacle in Washington–manufactured over irrelevancies concerning what should have been a routine raising of the national debt limit before the Aug. 2 deadline–reality struck with a bombshell: the anemic “jobless” recovery in the U.S. has stalled. The economy is getting worse and there is no solution [=>]
New September-October 2011 issue of News & Letters now available online
September 10, 2011News & Letters, Vol. 56, No. 5
September-October 2011
Lead
Political spectacles cannot hide reality of deranged capitalism
At the end of a months-long political spectacle in Washington–manufactured over irrelevancies concerning what should have been a routine raising of the national debt limit before the Aug. 2 deadline–reality struck with a bombshell: the anemic “jobless” recovery in the U.S. [=>]